Dark Humanity

by Gwynn White

  “We should take her to the emergency room,” Ricker said, always the practical one. He wanted to get off the street and maybe become a bus driver one day. He thought maybe he’d like helping people travel around.

  “If we take her,” Spencer said, “Then they’ll take her. She’ll be deep in the system and might never come back out.”

  Ricker pressed his lips together in a grim line. The chug of the engine changed to a low whine as Spencer turned into a parking lot. Spencer knew more about the system than any of us. He was the only one who had finished high school so far, on account of his being locked up and forced to do it. If you really wanted to get Spencer mad, you asked him about school.

  “What do you want to do?” Ano said.

  Everyone seemed to wait for my answer. I didn’t know what the right answer was, only what I wanted most at that moment. “I just want to take a shower.”

  The van stopped. “We’re here,” Spencer said.

  Through the front windshield, the fitness club sign glowed red against the pink sky. Inside there were hot showers, running water, real bathrooms available at any time of day. No one could kick us out as long as we paid our dues. We’d started the contract through a gift debit card Spencer had picked up at the liquor store. As long as we kept it on file, we could pay cash on the account.

  Leaf pulled out an envelope from the clothes cabinet. He held out his hand for the dollars in mine.

  “I usually pay. He expects me to pay,” I said.

  “He’s going to have to take a rain-check,” Ano said, because everyone knew how I paid our dues when we were short sometimes.

  I looked over my bloody clothes and gave over the green.

  Leaf jumped out. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

  Ano closed the door and held up the purple clothes. “Put this over what you’re wearing. We can’t get you inside looking like that.” He grabbed a rag and a gallon milk jug we stored water in. He soaked the rag and then started scrubbing at my face.

  “Ow,” I said.

  “You look like you murdered someone,” Ano said.

  “I know,” I said. “Kind of feels like it.”

  “How would you know?” Ano said.

  “May I never know.”

  Ano worked away at my forehead, then my neck.

  “Gabbi,” I said. “Do you have the phone?”

  She pulled it out and handed it to me. I opened the message app and began typing.

  “What are you doing,” Ano said quietly.

  “I don’t know how to put what’s happening right now in words, but there’s a lot of other stuff I have to say.”

  “You can do it later. We should be focused on cleaning up and leaving town.”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know how to explain that there was this sinking feeling inside me. It said I probably didn’t have much time left. Street kids felt that way a lot. I had felt that way before and I was still alive. But this seemed different somehow.

  “If I don’t get this out there now. I feel like, I don’t know, I feel like it’s going to drain out of my brain and I’ll never remember it.”

  He shook his head, his dark eyes disappearing in the growing shadows. “You always remember when it matters.”

  I stopped, then reached for his hand and held it. “Maybe not this time.” In spite of the heat, he shivered.

  “Stop it, Mary,” Gabbi said. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “All right, Gabbi. Sorry.” I swallowed around a lump forming in my throat. “So…you and me, we should go spanging again tomorrow, don’t you think? We’ve got to take advantage of our lucky streak while it lasts.”

  “Oh shut up,” she said, but there was a smile in her words.

  To be honest, I felt a hint of a smile on my lips because this was the part I liked best—lifting people’s spirits when things were really crappy. “There was this one dude today,” I said, “he got all up in our business when he saw the phone, but we set him straight.”

  “You almost pushed him into the street!” Gabbi said.

  “You would have, if I hadn’t done it,” I said.

  “Yeah, thanks, but no, I wouldn’t have.”

  “You would have if he’d been picking on me,” I said.

  “But he went for Gabbi,” Ano said. “And you didn’t let him.”

  “She just stood up,” Gabbi said, standing up and reenacting the scene, “and he was like head and shoulders taller than her, but he wouldn’t stop messing with us, so she got up between me and him, and it doesn’t even matter that he’s all red in the face and about to call the cops. She pushed him twice until he got a clue.” Gabbi laughed. “He pretty much ran down the block after that.”

  “See,” Ano said, caressing the back of my hand with his thumb. “You remember what to do when it counts.”

  The quick adrenaline rush of the retelling drifted away. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  I finished the blog post while he finished scraping my face with the rag. There was a lot more I had planned to say, but I couldn’t remember it at the moment. I saved it as a draft so I could finish it later. I hoped Ano was right—that this time was like all the others and I’d figure out a way to survive it.

  I tapped the button and returned the phone to Gabbi’s care. I realized Jimmy hadn’t said a word for a long time. “Jimmy? Are you okay?”

  A sniffling sound came from his direction.

  “It’s going to be okay, Jimmy,” I said.

  Spencer looked away. So did Ricker, Ano, Gabbi. No one wanted to make him feel bad for crying. We all cried sometimes. We all did our best to hide it.

  The metal rollers screeched as the door opened. Leaf stood in semi-shadow, the sign lights casting an eerie neon line around his body. He was only fifteen, but had been a throwaway for two years. One day he told his mom he was gay and she told him never to come back.

  The parking lot was empty, the sky now a dull imitation of its earlier colors. Leaf looked at Spencer and something passed between them that none of us could read. They did that sometimes. They’d been together for awhile now.

  “We’re good.”

  Steam filled the bathroom with curtains of damp air. The tile was slippery, cold, welcoming. Female voices bounced off the ceramic walls and created a sort of chaotic foundation of noise that soothed me. Gabbi and I stepped into different stalls, having left the boys to their side of the bathrooms.

  I blasted the shower on full and let the lavender shampoo and hot water wash away the sweat, the blood, the dirt. The pain of the heat mixed with the pain in my leg. The wound was fiery, red, puckered. But it was my eye that burned like a black widow bite, the poison creeping through my skin and muscles, entering my blood stream, poisoning my system along the way. The leg bite had only added insult to injury. I told myself if I wasn’t feeling better in two hours I would make them dump me at the closest hospital.

  The water drummed on my back like the rhythm of a train on the tracks. Hopping a train was always a rush. Like when you get your first tattoo. That kind of rush. It’s like the best movie screen. You just sit there and maybe you’re high or drunk, or not, it doesn’t matter. You see these places, these dark forests and blue-black nights and stars and mountains and there is no other way to see them.

  The water cut off with a whine and a trickle.

  I dried myself off with a towel, scrubbing my skin until it flushed red, breathing in the clean scent of the cotton. Blood trickled in two rivulets down either side of my ankle. The flesh had swelled enough I thought the bite would stop bleeding soon.

  I tied a strip of cloth tight around my calf and dressed in the purple outfit I was still stuck with.

  Our phone rested on the bench next to Gabbi’s clothes. I sat down with it and texted out everything I could think of about how to run away and keep from making my same mistakes. The post felt jumbled, unconnected, but I felt better when it was all down.

  I decided to make it go live, right then. Just in case.

  The app
’s progress bar moved, then stalled. I stared at it, willing the bar to move just a little more, but there wasn’t enough signal. An error message popped up and said it would try again every five minutes until it completed the connection. That would have to do.

  I locked the phone and waited for Gabbi and thought about what to do next.

  We were all together now, we had been together, watching out for each other for years. We could rely on one another to get out of scrapes and mistakes and danger. We had plans to get off the streets and then we’d be safe for good and no one would stop us. We’d get out of town and then visit some random med clinic. I’d tell them a homeless guy had bitten me and they would pump me so full of antibiotics I’d have the runs for weeks.

  End of infection. End of a crazy story I would then write about for days, but only as fiction. Otherwise no one would believe it.

  Four women entered the bathroom, their voices sharp and loud and full of derision. One of the women looked at me, just looked at me. She wore yoga pants and a tight-fitting tank top, black on bottom, bright pink on top. Her face said she knew I didn’t belong there. Two of the women dropped used towels on the tile floor and kept walking. The pitch of their voices slapped the walls and then my ears. My head flared with pain and red washed over my vision.

  She spoke even though her mouth didn’t open. She looked right at me and said, “You’re a whore and your mother is a whore and no wonder your stepdad beat you. Leave now while you still have the chance.”

  I curled my fists and a low growl crept into my throat. How dare she. I paid my dues. We paid and we didn’t come in here acting like we owned the place, acting like we could do whatever we wanted, dropping towels on the ground for someone else to pick up.

  “Mary?”

  I whirled, readying a punch.

  Gabbi’s eyes widened and she raised her hands to block a blow. Her hair rested in wet tendrils around her shoulders, dampening her shirt.

  But I would never hit her.

  Conversation stopped. The silence deafened me.

  I realized the woman hadn’t said a word to me. I’d imagined it, but it had seemed so real.

  I opened my hands and forced my arms to my sides. The sound of shower water filled the space.

  Gabbi glared at the women. They looked away. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  We went from the shower stalls to the locker area. Side by side, like I hadn’t been about to attack her. The women laughed at something, probably us.

  “Did they ask for your ID, too?” One of the women said, her words almost lost in the way it slapped around the tile.

  We both froze.

  “Right after class. They aren’t letting anyone out until they check your ID.”

  “Did they say who they’re looking for? What would they be doing here?”

  “Lots of weird stuff in the news these days. I’m just glad I got my mother-in-law to take the kids for an hour. I can’t bother to keep up with much else.”

  Gabbi grabbed my sleeve. I walked to the bathroom entrance and looked out. The cool air conditioning was a shock after the humidity of the bathroom. The suits had arrived. One currently waited outside rooms opposite from us. Two more moved around treadmills and weight benches, pausing to look at faces and then moving on.

  “How did they know we were here?” I said.

  “Does it matter?” Gabbi said.

  We shrunk into the shadow of the bathroom entrance. I pressed myself into the stone wall and looked back into the women’s bathroom, and then out to the men hunting for us. “I’ll get the boys.”

  “Mary,” Gabbi hissed.

  I slipped across the open space separating the two sides. The humidity hit me like a wet blanket. A young guy sat on the bench, toweling his hair, another small white towel around his waist. He looked up and raised an eyebrow at me.

  I smiled and said, “Sorry, just looking for my friends.”

  “It’s all right.” He smiled back.

  “Spencer!” I shouted loud enough for them to hear but not loud enough to draw attention from outside. “Food’s getting cold!” Which was our fancy secret code for it was time to get the hell out.

  The boys tumbled out of the shower area in various states of dress and wetness, but done up enough to go in public. Ano looked good dressed in loose pants and bare chest that showed off his tan and dozens of white scars.

  I didn’t say anything, just forced a smile at Spencer’s look so he would know we were in real trouble.

  Leaf grabbed a pile of stuff from the bench and headed past me out of the bathroom. I turned to walk alongside him.

  “Bad?” he said.

  “Not good,” I said.

  “How’s the leg?”

  “Not so good either.”

  He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. For a moment, a half breath, a millisecond, this spark lit up inside of me, it told me to hurt him because he wasn’t allowed to touch me without asking, and I would teach him a lesson so that he would never, ever touch anyone again.

  Bile stung my throat. I pushed myself away and walked into the center of the main workout space, veering for one of the suits.

  Leaf was the kindest, gentlest, most brotherly person of all the people I had ever, ever known. He would never hurt me, he was only offering the comfort I had often sought out from him. What was wrong with me?

  My stomach twisted. Pain flared in my calf. I stumbled, knee touching the cushioned floor. I looked up and locked stares with one of the suits.

  “Hey.” He stretched out his arm. “Stay where you are.” He pulled out a phone and spoke into it.

  The two other suits turned like robots. I felt their gaze on me, evaluating me, undressing me. I would make them pay. I would—

  “Mary!” Gabbi hissed. She grabbed me on one side, and suddenly Ano was there and he lifted me off the ground.

  The fire alarm went off. The ringing covered the dance music. A strobe light flashed. People streamed from the rooms, the treadmills, the pools. The women rushed out of the bathroom.

  The suits yelled and waved their hands and pushed people aside, but no one heard them over the alarm. Their pushing only made people freak out more.

  A family of five ran for the front doors, two women followed, and the chaos grew and bottlenecked at the people-counter. The suits tried to stop the tide. An older man must have been shouting because his face turned purple.

  Finally the suits stood back and opened the door. The alarm continued its piercing tone. A middle-aged woman slapped her hands over her ears. Two teenagers tried their headphones.

  Gabbi and Ano helped me hop over the people-counter next to a bodybuilder still slick with sweat and oil. The suits couldn’t see us.

  A dark van and cop car, sirens and lights off, were parked next to our van. The doors were open, shadows were inside. One of them stepped outside, into the parking lot light. Officer Hanley. Even in the chaos, he saw us, shouted, pointed. The other uniforms jumped out.

  Ano said, “Around then. Quick.”

  It seemed like everyone inside the gym was now outside. People milling around, phones out, asking others what was happening. I waited for the groan and growl of a monster to start up. It was too close to what Gabbi and I had just been through. Crowds were bad news.

  Spencer pushed people away and made a path. We rounded the corner. The crowd closed behind us, creating an obstacle course for the uniforms. The alarm faded into a dull ringing.

  Leaf took the lead, making us run behind the dumpsters, through an alleyway, out back behind a grocery store we scored leftover fruit from on Wednesdays.

  We continued silently on foot. Leaf stopped at the next block, a strip mall where people only ordered dinner for take out, never dine in. The greasy smells drifting out of the Chinese hole-in-the-wall made my stomach rumble with hunger and a sudden queasiness. I hadn't eaten since early that morning. A cash advance place had closed for the night, though the entire inside was still lit up and the sign glowed a nauseous gre
en.

  “I did it,” Jimmy said. “I pulled the fire alarm. I did just like you said, Spencer. I really did it.” His voice raised in pitch.

  Ano let go of me and I was suddenly drifting. The building, the lights, the trees, the people, it all wavered, just a little bit. Jimmy shouldn’t be talking so loud. He was going to get us found. We were a bunch of teenagers who looked like they’d just run away from a bunch of trouble. He needed to shut up.

  “Mary, what are you doing?” Ano’s voice came from far away. All I could see was Jimmy’s pinched, young face. Flushed from the run, from the showers, from the pride of pulling the alarm that had kept me from turning myself over to the uniforms and saving them all. It was his fault.

  “Get away, Mary, just back off!” Ano jumped between me and Jimmy.

  I stopped. I didn’t understand why I had stopped. Why had I been moving? Why were my hands in the air, my fingers curled into claws?

  I stood there, swaying on my feet, trying to figure this out. It was ME, I was the one who jumped between oogles and trouble. I was the one, not him, not anyone else. Why was he standing there, looking at me like that?

  “How to Prepare”

  Posted August 10th at 7:46PM on Do More Than Survive: How to THRIVE as a Runaway.

  Practice running away before you actually run away. Pretend you’re going to sleep over at a friend’s house for a day or two and then go sleep out in the woods, eat out of some dumpsters, use only public restrooms to wash up.

  Also, put good karma out into the world and leave a note to whoever you left behind—whether or not you think they care about you. I called my mom after I left. She said she was worried about me out here, but not enough to leave my stepfather. But I called, and I was even nice about it, plus, then you won’t get reported as a kidnapping. Let the police spend time and money on finding kids who want to go home. Remember, no one likes a jerk.

  Figure out what you’re going to do with all the extra time once you run away. Other kids your age are going to be in school. Unless you get involved in drugs, or alcohol, or prostitution—not recommended unless you ran away because you secretly want to kill yourself, which was what I wanted at first—you are going to have a lot of free time on your hands.